


a person worthy of love

by ghostinthebook



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Feelings, Gen, give Max LB a hug please, he has a great family but other people are mean, i think it's angst with a happy ending?, so i'll tag it with that, warlock angst but not about being immortal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-18 23:40:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18128045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostinthebook/pseuds/ghostinthebook
Summary: Max was tired of being treated like an object and not a person.In other words, Max Lightwood-Bane doesn't like how random Shadowhunters act like he's nobody.





	a person worthy of love

**Author's Note:**

> oof idk where this idea came from but boy this is angsty. don't worry, Max is still a happy boy, but he's really tired of this stuff. anyone would be. enjoy the angst!! and sorry lol

Max was tired of being treated like an object and not a person.

Not by his parents, or anyone else close to him. They always respected him. He was Max, he was their Blueberry, he was a son, brother, nephew, grandson.

He was never an “it”.

The other Shadowhunters, in Idris, when they visited Institutes, anywhere, they called him “it”. They called him “that”. They did the same to his Papa, too. When together, they were lucky if they were called “those two”. 

His birth mother. “Who could ever love it?”, the note had said. Not him. It.

When he first met his parents, the note introduced him as an it. An object.

Of course, his parents, his brother, his family proved that note wrong. His birth mother was wrong. He was not an it, and he was loved. He was loved by so many people.

Aunt Izzy, she loved him. He remembered a time, when he was only ten years old, and the two of them went to the Institute. She would give him some simple weaponry training, to supplement the Shadowhunter training he was already getting from Dad and the magic training he was getting from Papa. A visiting Shadowhunter passed by the training room while Max was holding a sword (an unruned sword, of course). 

“Why is that warlock holding a sword?” the Shadowhunter had said. Not he. That. That warlock, but they way he had said it made it sound like the sword was being held by a demon.

“That warlock, as you said, is my nephew Max, and you can use his name, y’know,” Izzy had said, glaring at the man until he left. He didn’t take back his words, though. In his eyes, Max was not Max, Max was that warlock. Just a half-demon holding a sword. No right to be in the Institute. No right to train with his father’s sister. Nothing. An it.

Max did train that day, learned how to wield the sword as good as any Shadowhunter his age. But the words stuck with him. And it wasn’t the last time.

Uncle Jace and Aunt Clary would defend him. Whenever the Shadowhunter academy trainees visited, or he visited Shadowhunter Academy (“this is where we found you, Max”), usually at least one of them was there. One time, when he was visiting the Academy, two Shadowhunters stood near to him. Far enough for them to think he couldn’t hear them, but near enough that he could. The line between the elites and the dregs at the Academy had blurred, and was close to being erased, but the pair were definitely true-born Nephilim. They held their heads up high, so they could look down on “worthless” Downworlders.

“Why is it here?” one of them whispered. “I don’t know,” the other replied. “Maybe it’s here so that we can learn about warlock marks? It’s blue with horns, obvious signs that it’s a warlock.”

It. It. It.

Who could ever love it, Max thinks again.

“What are you two talking about?”

Jace and Clary walked up after Clary said that. They looked angry at the other Shadowhunter pair, obviously knowing what the two had said. 

The other pair didn’t seem to get the memo, though, as one of them said that they were “discussing what their Demonic Languages homework was the day before”.

“Well, that’s a lie, because we heard you, and you were talking rudely about my nephew. Apologize. Now.” Jace’s tone and facial expression left no room for argument.

“Sorry, warlock,” both of them said.

“My name is Max.”

The pair looked irritated. “Sorry, Max,” they said, looking less sincere than they had the first time they apologized. Which was a feat by itself.

That was also not the last time this happened. It seemed there would never be a last time.

The time that sticks out the most in his head is with his brother. Rafael. The pair of them, Max Michael Lightwood-Bane and Rafael Santiago Lightwood-Bane, taking on the world.

Other Shadowhunters never referred to Rafael as “it”. He didn’t get off easy, though, because his Papa and his brother were “filthy Downworlders”. He still faced quite a lot.

But whenever he heard someone calling his family “that”, or saying anything bad about them, he was ready to defend.

When Rafael was sixteen, and Max was fourteen, one such situation came about.

Another Shadowhunter family was staying at the Institute, and they had a daughter about Rafael’s age. The two trained together sometimes, and it looked like they were on their way to becoming good friends.

“Hey Rafe, heads up!” Max said as he went into the training room, and proceeded to summon a dodgeball and throw it directly at his brother. The perks of being a warlock, he thought as Rafe used his Shadowhunter reflexes to dodge the ball. When you can summon items out of thin air, you can always throw things at your brother.

Rafe had been training with the girl, though at the moment they were sitting on the ground and talking, instead. The girl looked to Max with confusion. Somehow, she seemed to have forgotten that the boy she was training with had a warlock brother. Max doubts that she had actually forgot.

“Why’s that here?”

She had whispered that to Rafael, a bit too loudly, and with too much emphasis on “that”. Rafe looked around, not thinking that she was referring to Max.

“The water cooler, the sword rack, the window? You gotta be more specific here,” Rafe said, still oblivious to the fact that she was talking about his brother. Rafael wasn’t stupid, he was actually quite intelligent, but he never thought of Max as a “that” or an “it”. He wasn’t around many people that did.

“The warlock,” she said. Once Rafe heard that, his brows furrowed, and frankly, he looked very angry.

“My brother is not a ‘that’, and we’re done training. Leave right now, or I’ll get my dad,” Rafe said with a scowl on his face and a glare in his eyes. The girl glared back, but still got up and left.

“Max, you okay?” Rafe asked. His anger had been quickly replaced with concern for his little brother, and he walked up to Max as he was talking.

“Yeah, it’s just annoying.” It was more than annoying, but Max was not in the mood for a big discussion that would end up including both his dads, and his brother, and the family of the girl. He was tired of fighting to be heard, tired of his loved ones having to fight for him.

Either way, he gave Rafe a hug, then a punch on the arm. For no reason. Sometimes, when you’re brothers, you just do that.

This time wasn’t the last, but Max made a decision. He decided that next time, he’d defend himself. It was always nice to have someone else stand up for him, but he needed to do it without them sometimes. He needed the confidence and the strength to be able to be his own protector.

Who could ever love it?

A lot of people, Max thinks. A lot of people love him.

He will never be an “it” again.


End file.
